Will the promise of $5,000 to every adult American secure a Republican victory in the November mid-terms?
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno says he’ll push to make President Donald Trump's $1 trillion promise a reality.
We'll have an update on the governor's race.
Ohio farmers sound off on tariffs and rising prices.
It's all coming up on this week's reporter roundtable.
Guests:
- Karen Kasler, bureau chief, Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Shane Stegmiller, reporter, Hannah News Service
- Susan Tebben, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to the All Sides Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Joining us on the Roundtable this week, Karen Kasler, Bureau Chief for the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Welcome back, Karen.
Karen Kasler: Great to be here.
Juravich: And Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service. Welcome back, Shane.
Shane Stegmiller: Good morning.
Juravich: And Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Welcome back, Susan. Hi, thanks. All right, so there's a new poll out from Bowling Green State University that illustrates just how unhappy Americans are with politics. The poll found that Americans prefer mosquito bites stubbing their toe or waiting in line at the DMV over today's politics. So Shane, you wrote about some of the poll's findings and it seems Americans would endorse some rather unpleasant things than spend any moments. Thinking about politics. I mean, what do you make of that national mood?
Stegmiller: Well, who could blame them these days? So this was done by the Bowling Green State University's Democracy and Public Policy Network. They do monthly polls, I believe, and also YouGov. And this was a national poll. This wasn't just Ohio. They did it among 1,200 likely voters. And one of the things they did, the usual, you know, ask about President Donald Trump, his job performance and various federal issues. They also, to kind of get an understanding of how Americans are viewing the current state of politics, they asked a series of questions and they say, which would you prefer over quote unquote politics today? And they had a whole list of items that they threw out. Some of the things that were more popular than today's politics, early morning alarm, 71% of people said they would rather have an early morning alarmed than politics. The DMV. Jury duty, labor unions, headaches, people, 60% said they'd rather have a headache than deal with today's politics, getting bit by a mosquito, slow wifi, we know how annoying that can be, stubbing their toe, the news media, landlords. And Taylor Swift was one of the people they threw in there, would you prefer Taylor Swift over today's Politics? And she was popular, 60%, said they would prefer her. Okay. This would... She's an elf.
Juravich: She's an Ohioan now too, we have to add that in. She is, she's a Clevelander, a Cleveland area.
Stegmiller: 12% overall said they have a somewhat favorable view or better of politics today. So this should go to show you. Among the things that are less popular or that today's politics are more popular than, they said billionaires, telemarketers, health insurance companies, artificial intelligence, Elon Musk and root canal. So.
Juravich: The way I wrote it is as if you're an
Stegmiller: is that if you're into today's politics, at least it's better than a root canal, according to most people. The highest number, the least popular among those were billionaires. Only 36% were chosen billionaires over today's politics, and data centers, our favorite topic. 37% chose that over todays politics.
Juravich: All right, so now that we've gotten through all of that, Karen, I mean, polls are not always an accurate gage, but I mean what do you think of some of these Bowling Green findings and aligning with like, you know, anecdotes of what you hear people say? Well, I think it's.
Kasler: It's just kind of funny to compare politics to some of these things that are either starting at just kind basic annoyances to things that really, really problematic. It's an interesting spin on polling for right now. I think right now we're starting to see, at least nationally, more polling, getting more serious about polling likely voters as opposed to just registered voters. So we could see some polls that are a little bit more, hopefully, accurate. But we haven't had really accurate national reporting in Ohio for quite a while. And so I'm waiting to see the Quinnipiac or something like that comes in and does a poll that we can use as kind of a baseline here. I mean, the polls that you hear the candidates talk about now, they could be from a variety of different sources. So I don't know that you can really put stock in any particular poll at this point.
Juravich: Yeah, I did an interview last week with a gentleman from Ohio State who's using AI to change polling and it was interesting, but then hearing that people don't trust, don't trust or rather talk about politics than AI, that's very interesting if they're talking to an AI chat bot to do a poll, but they don't like AI and don't like politics. I don't know where this all comes out. So.
Kasler: Obviously been a problem with polling for a while because we've seen some blatant discrepancies between what the polls showed and what the final result was. So there obviously are some things that need to change about the way polling has traditionally been done, but I certainly have no ideas on how to do that.
Stegmiller: And just a little bit more on this poll is that they asked some other questions, and 87% of the people who they surveyed feel that they're exhausted from today's politics. So you kind of see that reflected. Only 92% of respondents said that they think politicians are out of touch with regular people. So it's just, you can kind of see that feeling.
Juravich: Did you, or did it say whether they had to identify as a Democrat, Republican, independent or?
Stegmiller: They did do, they did, I didn't get the break, I don't have that available because they did the polling on, I believe they might have done some polling on some, maybe that was a different poll on the different presidential candidates.
Kasler: I think one of the things that was interesting was the very first question. To what degree do you regret your vote for president in the 2024 election? 91% said not at all. And we keep hearing about people, especially Trump voters saying that they are regretting their choice or whatever. Well, this poll suggests that a lot of people are not regretting their choice at all
Stegmiller: And I saw something similar in a Quinnipiac poll that came out, national poll that we, there was a very, maybe 10% at the most was people regretting their vote for, in the last election. So I would make.
Kasler: So I would be very cautious about taking any sort of idea of people regretting their vote and extrapolating it widely because it doesn't appear polling is showing that people are regretting who they voted for in 2024.
Susan Tebben: And that's the thing about polls is, and there are obviously very good polling out there, very good researchers that are doing good work, but I mean, it depends from poll to poll to poll who you're talking to, you know, trusting that they're giving you the right answer or the answer that they truly believe and stuff. That's why we had some trouble with polling back in the day. But that's, I think, part of the trust issue for Ohioans and for voters is say, who do we trust at this point? Who's doing these polls? Who? Who are we talking to? Where are the sources to these? So it's.
Stegmiller: How are they doing it?
Tebben: Yeah, it's a lot of having to educate yourself on what these things are and more work than you've ever had to do.
Juravich: Well, and I appreciate my trusty panel because as I was choking on my coffee, you all kept talking. So that was great. Yay. Thank you so much. Yes, you were vamping while I choked on my copy. Anyway, apologies for that. I did want to ask one more thing. It's not related to the poll, but it's related to national mood. At the event in Dallas, this midterm convention that the Republican Party had in Dallas. President Trump said that he would pay every adult American $5,000 if the Republicans win in November. And there's been varying degrees of reaction to that. Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno told USA Today that he wants to work hard to make that promise happen. The promise will cost a trillion dollars. I mean, just having talked about how much people hate politics, and then to hear that the president wants to give everyone $5,000 if the Republicans win, I, what do you make of that?
Stegmiller: I mean, it depends on how skeptical you are of what the president says. The people who don't like the president also have been tweeting and posting comments nonstop that they're also waiting for their tariff checks and their doge checks and that there are staunch defenders of the president who say that it's going to happen, they'll find the money. You mentioned Senator Moreno, he also tweeted out that he's getting the bill ready so Soon as. They hit the lame duck session, they're gonna pass it. So, stay tuned.
Kasler: I think it's interesting to hear some of the comments from people who didn't like what Biden did in the post pandemic period where there were checks that were sent out to people and how that hurt the economy. I mean, Vivek Ramaswamy is a person who will tell you that that's part of the reason why we have an affordability crisis is that the the the Biden administration flooded the country with money, essentially. Well, this is kind of the same thing, is it not? And so I just, I'm interested to see reaction if this actually goes forward. And, you know, the question of if we can do this after the election, why not do it now when people are struggling with high gas prices and all the other things that are happening?
Juravich: Yeah, that's a good point that if they get if everyone had $5,000 in their bank account tomorrow wouldn't everyone feel a little happier.
Tebben: Yeah, but you have to also talk about how far would $5,000 stretch these days with consumer prices and inflation and talking about interest rates going up, maybe. I mean, I wouldn't say no to it. No, I certainly would not say no, but it rings true of the like stimulus checks from the COVID pandemic of like, yes, this is good money to have, but once it's over, we're back to where we were before.
Juravich: I'm also I've slept since then I don't remember how much I got from Biden in the stimulus checks. Do you remember what they were that was from Trump but
Kasler: and it was it was part of the american rescue yeah there was
Stegmiller: Yeah, there were stimulus checks there through Trump during the COVID period, but then the American rescue plan also had.
Juravich: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't remember exactly what it was. I do remember getting a better tax credit right off for kids, too. That was in there. All right. Well, anyway, Shane, did you want to add one more thing? I was just going to say.
Stegmiller: I was just going to say, you know, Republicans control everything right now, so there's nothing stopping them from doing this right now too, if they so chose.
Juravich: Right, yes, this is the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News, and we are talking with Shane Stegmiller with Hanna News Service, Susan Tebben with Ohio Capital Journal, and Karen Kasler with the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Karen, you had sit down interviews with both major party candidates for governor, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Democratic challenger Amy Acton, separately. They were not together. The two have not agreed on debates. You interviewed them separately and these interviews were for your TV show The State of Ohio. Tell me your main takeaways from these two interviews.
Kasler: Well, I tried to focus these interviews on, really, policy rather than campaign issues. I did ask them about campaign stuff, but really tried to focus initially on their plans on property taxes and data centers, because I think those are the two issues that people care about the most. And on November 4th, when all this is over, they're gonna care about which candidate won, what they said they were gonna do about those two things. And so, With Rama Swami, I was trying to get him to really kind of clarify some of the things he said about property taxes, because he's talked about rolling back property taxes to pre-pandemic levels, the largest property tax rollback in Ohio history. How do you achieve that without state money being involved or local government suffering tremendously? And I really didn't get a whole lot of action on that in terms of, you know. Saying.
Juravich: He kept saying to you the aggregate will come out like in the end, the aggregate, the aggregate and the end. And I sat there and I was like, okay, I need to Google the word aggregate.
Kasler: Well, and I asked both him and Amy Acton, who has a property tax plan that's a little bit more targeted because she's talking about the Homestead tax exemption and kind of a tax credit for people under a certain income level and that sort of thing, what's the cost of these things? How much do they cost? And they both seem to know, but they would not give me those numbers. And it's very frustrating because I think that's, a basic piece of information that's incredibly important is how much do you expect these tax plans to cost? And then where is that money coming from? Because it can either come from the state where they could backfill it and local governments and schools would be held harmless or it can come from local governments and schools raising more taxes at the local level. And so I really didn't get a whole lot of specifics from either of them on that. But then also on data centers, they both have a data center plan. There are similarities between the two. But obviously there are some big differences. And I did ask Ramaswamy specifically about his plan for free electricity, free residential electricity. What does that mean? Because electricity, the cost of electricity is just part of your overall bill. Do you mean the whole bill? And he did say free electricity. That still means that there's other parts of the bill such as distribution and transmission that are still there. So it wouldn't be no electric bill. So it's kind of a
Juravich: discount on your belly.
Kasler: And they're talking about the area around, a zone around these data centers. We're not talking about entire state of Ohio, everybody getting quote, free electricity. And then with Acton, I talked to her also about her plan for data centers and you know, hers is a lot more conditional talking about things like requiring union labor for all of those future data centers, a governor can't order that, that's not possible in an executive order. And she said she plans to use her influence to make that happen. So those two things were interesting. I asked him a couple of quick questions. Quick, it's hard to get a quick question and answer out of people who are running for governor. But like expansion of gambling in Ohio because we've heard some Republican lawmakers talking about that as a potential revenue source. Ramaswamy again was very vague on that. He's backed by some church and Christian leaders who are very opposed to the expansion of gambling and Ohio. And then Acton has been a little bit more on board with the idea, but she said there would really have to be a different regulatory environment to make sure that it doesn't just run wild.
Juravich: Did they both admit that increase changing gambling is a way to bring in some more revenue? Well, like I said, I think Ramaswami.
Kasler: Was much more cautious about it. Acton, yes, she said that, you know, this is a way that revenue can be raised for programs and services that we want to do. And so I just, I thought those were, those were interesting answers, though not really direct in terms of yes, I would do this or no, I wouldn't. But you very rarely get that anyway, where somebody says yes I will or no I will.
Juravich: Right, and you had, I don't know what, like 25 minutes to interview them both. 24 minutes. 24. Okay.
Kasler: And the interviews aired unedited. My question is their answers. We didn't cut a word out of either of those interviews, because I really wanted it to be a conversation where you could see the candidates and me talking. Because we're not going to get that with debates, apparently. And I think that's one of the strengths of debates, is that you get to see the candidate's interacting, taking real questions from real journalists, and not relying on teleprompters, and those kinds of things. And I that if we're going to have debates. These kind of interviews can help a lot in having, helping people know a little bit more about who they're gonna be voting for.
Juravich: Okay. And so you did get to though, ask them both about the debate.
Kasler: Issue, right? I didn't even have to ask with Ramaswamy. He brought it up within the first minute of our conversation. And several more times. Yes. Yes. Because, you know, he's obviously, he was first out of the gate saying, I want to do this and I'm ready to go with CNN and an NBC, I think, Cincinnati station. And Acton shot him down pretty directly saying she doesn't want to platform a scam artist. Those are her words. Because she's very angry about... The ads that have been airing that have really attacked her for all sorts of things. I mean, you know, whether she has a drug or alcohol problem, which she did specifically say in our interview, she does not have a drug alcohol problem. But also just the ads have really gotten very nasty. And I think that it's hard to imagine these two people on a debate stage when you've seen these ads. But then again, we've seen nasty ads before and yet they somehow come together and have debates in the past they have.
Juravich: And Ramaswamy didn't really say anything about the attack ads. He kind of turned it on that there's attack ads about him and his pharmaceutical company. He just flipped it around to that, but he didn't address the attack against her. Right.
Kasler: Right, and he specifically said that that story, that that Alzheimer's drug trial ad is based on, and actually the ad, the Acton ad, really hitting him on that came out after our, my interview with Ramos Walden, but the story's been out there for a while, and he said that it's absolutely untrue, and shame on Amy Acton and her allies for putting this out there. But Acton is really, her campaign has really stepped up some of these ads because, Well, you know, it's kind of matching what Ramoswami and the Republican Party have been putting out for a while.
Juravich: Yeah, we talked about this on the roundtable a couple of weeks ago, because Jeremy Pelzer did a piece about lies and ads, right? And you're allowed to lie in an ad. Yes, you are. Yeah. So...
Kasler: I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's legally allowed.
Juravich: Legally allowed, you can lie in an ad. You can say whatever you want. That's free speech, right? So, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're going to come back and we're to talk about the event that happened, the incident that happened at the Amy Acton event at the Canfield Fair. So, did you two want to add anything related to Karen's interviews right this second before I, okay.
Tebben: I think they were great. All right. Thank you.
Juravich: Coming up we're going to talk about that incident at the Canfield Fair and then we're also going to talk Ohio farmers and how they are upset about the cost of tariffs and rising prices. That's when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides
Weekly Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we talk all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us in the studio, we have Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service, and Karen Kasler, bureau chief for the the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Karen, when you had your sit down interview with Amy Acton, that was on the heels of the incident at the Canfield Fair, where a man named Patrick Kavos. Pushed through a crowd as Acton was speaking, injuring a few people in the process. Acton was unharmed, but Havas or Havas was armed, never drew any of the weapons that he had according to law enforcement. What did Amy Acton have to say to you about that?
Kasler: Well, yeah, this was Tuesday, and that event had happened on Sunday, so it was definitely very close by. She praised law enforcement for their work there and thoughts and prayers for the couple that was injured when he was arrested, when Patrick Kavis was arrested. But she then really hit Ramaswami for what she called the inflammatory rhetoric that she says has led to these kind of activities and political violence in general. And she said that. She specifically was blaming right-wing influencers and saying that Ramaswamy needs to call out certain conservative right- wing influencers on social media, people who have been posting all sorts of things that she described as inflammatory about her and that he needs to call those out and really make sure that that's not wanted. I mean, we actually heard Governor Mike DeWine do kind of something similar in terms of He was asked about the attack on her, and he first of all said, glad that she's OK. But then there were these suggestions that it was a hoax or that Democrats were overblowing it or something like that from some of these right-wing influencers. And DeWine said, that's garbage. Nobody was overblowing anything. So I mean, whether you're seeing some video come out now about this attack. And it's The idea that somebody could be armed with two weapons and a taser and get in to see a candidate is concerning no matter who you are and kind of no matter what happened. Shane, you wrote about
Juravich: about the arrangement, arrangement. Oh my gosh, arrangement, I'm having a day. Shane, you wrote about the arraignment of Patrick Kvoss. What was he charged with? How did he plead? And do we have, do we know anything about his motive for attending the event and trying to like storm up toward Amy Acton?
Stegmiller: So he was only charged with misdemeanors. He got, I believe it was mainly involved with the fairgoers who were knocked over. He has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, I believed, did a gaggle with reporters afterwards, told reporters that he was trying to kind of get up and act in a question at the time, and then he was stopped. By her security team in the Highway Patrol. And that's where kind of some of the issues happened. The prosecutor has also gave an interview to several media outlets after the arraignment and said that the charges didn't, the evidence didn't support like any felony charges against Mr. Havas. So that's.
Juravich: So just because, I mean, he had the weapons, but if he has a concealed, or if he has a carry permit, he's allowed to, right?
Stegmiller: And from what I understand, I think he did have a carry permit also that. Uh, the prosecutor pointed out, I don't think there's a lot of video of the instant. In fact, the only video of the incident may have come from Mr. Havass himself. He might've been filming at the time. Uh, so they put out a call to ask for, if anybody else had any video, there was a lot, uh, talk, uh I'm not sure how accurate this is that, uh the acting campaign themselves had been asking attendees not to video anything during her speech. So there's... You know, there's not a lot to work off of. It's kind of a he said, she said kind of thing. Well, I did find out.
Juravich: Well, I did find out from one video I saw, Karen, that she wasn't really standing on a stage. I pictured her like standing on a stage making a speech, but she was kind of just like on the ground. There was like hay on the ground and it was a circle. She was in a tent. Yeah. It was in the...
Kasler: She was in a tent, it was the Mahoney County Democratic Party tent, and so, yeah, she was speaking to people who were gathered there to hear her talk. And you know, in talking to Acton's campaign, they've been very cautious about what they wanted to say about whether she had told, whether the volunteers there had told people not to record, but has said that that's a policy that a lot of campaigns are using because of security concerns. They're concerned about trackers, who are people from other campaigns who come in and try to take videos so that it can be used in ads and that kind of thing. I'm not sure what the security concern is about trackors, but we saw there was another video that circulated over the weekend where somebody was trying to ask her a question, take pictures and whatever, and her campaign was pushing this person away saying, no pictures, no videos. But right after this security incident happened, I could understand why somebody would want keep their candidates surrounded as she's walking through a crowd or whatever. So it's the whole question of whether people should be able to access candidates like this when they go out and do these kinds of events. That's again, since we don't have debates, these are the types of things that we have available so that you can talk to the candidates and see them in action. And if those things end because of security concerns, that would be a serious problem.
Stegmiller: And there has been a line of attack from the Ramaswami and the Ramasawami campaign and the Ohio Republican party that, you know, Acton is not taking questions from the public and that she's not making herself available.
Juravich: And Susan, back to what Karen was saying about how they asked Governor DeWine to react to reports by right-wing influencers that the incident was being overblown by the acting campaign. I mean, is it surprising that the Republican governor is pushing back on other Republicans, kind of in not so many words, you know, defending a Democrat? What do you make of that?
Tebben: No, I don't think for this kind of a situation it comes down to partisanship, or it shouldn't at least. But certainly we've seen DeWine in the past give his opinion, whether it's partisan or not. But these kinds of, you know, scary situations, I don't think anyone would consider it appropriate to say, well, she was a Democrat, so I'm gonna say something different. It's just, you now, out of the care for safety.
Kasler: And I should say, you know, Acton's campaign wanted Ramaswami to call out these right-wing influencers. He did make a statement, his campaign did make a statement after this saying that political violence has no place, that anything that keeps candidates from accessing their voters is a problem. And her campaign has also said that, I'm trying to remember, there was another thing I want, oh, that she has taken questions. That this argument that she doesn't take questions, that she's hiding, that's she's not out there. Talking to voters, she said she has been. And we just don't see as many videos from her campaign as we do from Ramaswami. He's been putting a lot of stuff out on social media showing him interacting at various events.
Juravich: Um, this is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. This is a weekly reporter round table with us. We have Karen Kastler, Bureau Chief for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Shane Stegmiller, reporter at Hanna News Service, and Susan Tebben, reporter at the Ohio Capital Journal. Just before we pivot to a new topic, Karen, um, where, if people want to watch your full 24 minute interviews, 24 minutes each, two separate interviews with Acton and Ramaswami, where do they go? Our archive is at statenews.org. All right. So there you can get. 24 uninterrupted minutes of interaction between a reporter and a candidate. Susan, you had a piece that you wrote where you talked with Ohio farmers and we've been hearing reaction from farmers nationally about federal program cuts, tariffs, food prices. You talked with Joe Logan, it's a beef farmer in Northeast Ohio, also the president of the Ohio Farmers Union. How has he been impacted lately?
Tebben: Oh, well, I mean, I'm sure everyone has heard about the recalls that have been happening with, you know, produce and stuff, but also there's been some talk about ground beef and beef in general, because of some imports as well that are planned. So as a beef farmer, he's actually transitioned from being a dairy farmer to being a beef farmer. So in doing that, he was talking about how he was really excited back in the day when he started. To sort of make some money and you know farmers live from weather system to weather system and from year to year on how they Whether they get profits or whether things work out for them. So he was you know Optimistic that there were going to be some some more profits for him and be able to you know Be a little more comfortable Than farmers are sometimes but with all of the tariffs and with all the you know extra costs that they've seen plus the idea that the Trump administration has said they're going to import beef from other countries, particularly I think Argentina was one of them, looking at adding that competition to the market when we're already seeing beef prices that are up more than they've been in recent years. Really discouraged him, really set him back in saying, you know, I don't know how we're going to do what I thought we were going to because now we have all this competition We didn't have four, plus we have. You know the idea that people are are scared of these recalls and these things that Have come from what he thinks comes from cuts to the FDA cuts to USDA In being able to track say different foodborne illnesses and different things different import importation problems To be able to look at those things really lowers the trust of the public to be able buy these things and also unfairly puts the blame on local farmers when a lot of these recalls, a lot of these things come from out of the country, come from other places, and from bigger corporation places instead of the smaller farmers that are doing the local.
Juravich: And since he, I mean, he's a beef farmer, but he's also the president of the Ohio Farmers Union. I mean what did he have to say about, you know, the basically public reaction to lettuce recently? I mean it's been very dramatic, been very sweeping and at the moment, I means in some places it's hard to even find lettuce. But I have, there has been stories about more people going to local farmers markets to get their lettuce. So you know what did you say about that? You know like he might be concerned with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but it did seem to benefit local farmers lettuce-wise.
Tebben: So, I mean, he said that he does emphasize that local farmers have not been the source of these things and they are doing their work and they're working hard to do all this stuff. They're also still hurting because tariff prices are going directly to their, I talked to another guy, Chris Gibbs, a farmer in Shelby County, going directly their farm equipment, being able to pay extra prices, having to pay the extra prices for their farm equipments, for seed, for fertilizer, All that stuff is being impacted by. Everything from the Iran War to the tariffs. So, yeah, he's definitely, you know, wants to see these local farmers do well, but he's also seeing the unintended effects of, you know all of this stuff is happening with Taylor Farms and with all of these, you now blueberries and everything from lettuce to blueberries to ground beef. And then just, you no people not knowing because they're living their lives and they just wanna go to the grocery store and buy their food and be able to feed their families. Not understanding that a lot of this stuff is not coming from the Ohio farmer that's down in Shelby County or up in Northeast Ohio. So farmers have to do more work to be able to do that, like saying go to farmers markets and get this local stuff rather than getting stuff from the grocery store.
Juravich: Yeah, Shelby County farmer Chris Gibbs, who you interviewed, is an interesting case. He used to be the chair of the Shelby County Republican Party and now is the chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party. Did you ask him what prompted his switch? Was it recent?
Tebben: No, that wasn't recent. I actually did a story on him maybe a year ago, a year or two ago. He did do the switch just because he felt like the party wasn't representing him as in representing Republicans. He did the switch a year or two a ago. Yeah, it was in. I called that recent. Yeah, yeah. I've written so many stories, who knows how long ago that was. Yeah.
Juravich: But yeah, what did he say? Oh, why he said the yeah.
Tebben: Yeah, because he didn't feel like the party was representing his needs and the needs of farmers and things like that. So he switched over. And yeah, now he's in the Democratic Party. He also is a former USDA county executive. So he has that perspective as well. So yeah, and in the story that I most recently wrote, he was talking again about the farm equipment he didn t realize, you know. Once he flipped it over and realized that it was made in China. Then he realized he was paying tariff on this and sort of adds to his problems. He's already having problems, being able to pay for the fertilizer, which comes from nitrogen, which is impacted by the Iran war. And gas prices is a global market, all that stuff. So, yeah, so he's definitely got his hats on for this. But in this case, yeah.
Juravich: There's, I mean, yeah, there's a lot to be said about the federal level. You know, the tariffs are a federal thing. The issue with the lettuce was, you know, a federal recall. Is there anything the state of Ohio can do to help farmers? I mean is. Yeah.
Tebben: I don't know directly if there's anything, and the farmers didn't talk exactly about this, because a lot of what they are talking about is on the federal level, like getting funding back for the FDA. There are, they did talk a little bit about having more field agents and getting the staffing back for the local USDA offices, to be able to have someone that they can reach out to and say, what's going on here, or say, here's the problems I'm having. Can you ratchet them up to the federal-level? So getting that staffing levels back to be able to have a local person that you can talk to was definitely something that they they wanted to see happen and and just having their voice heard like that part of the reason I wrote the article was because the gibs and some other former You know farmers and former usdas and a bunch of other people Wrote to the usda and department of agriculture to say We just want our voice heard and we want you to know that this is impacting us directly and everybody around the country, the farmers around the county are hearing about this. So what are you gonna do about it? Yeah. And they haven't heard a response yet.
Kasler: On the other side sometimes is the Ohio Farm Bureau from Joe Logan and the Farmers Union and Chris Gibbs. The Ohio Farm bureau is the biggest group representing farmers in Ohio and tends to be more conservative. But they're very concerned about the tariffs specifically on beef. And wrote a letter, the American Farm Bureau wrote a lot of Trump asking him to reconsider because farmers are trying to rebuild their herds after the drought last year. And tariffs. Are not incentives for farmers to do that, that's not gonna help, so.
Tebben: It definitely seems to be a bipartisan issue of farmers wanting changes.
Juravich: Yeah. And I don't know if any of you covered Bruce Vanderhoff's latest Department of Health event, but the lettuce is safer now, right? Are we better? I do think I am.
Tebben: I do think I think I read that the sell by dates are the best if used by whatever the dates are have passed for what they thought was the contaminated issues.
Kasler: I think there are more cases though of that particular bug.
Tebben: So, it's still out there. It's hard to tell, because it's anywhere from two weeks that you can get this and not know where you got it, so.
Juravich: All right, stay tuned, wash your lettuce. Coming up, more low-income and first-generation students will have a chance to go to college. That is when the Reporter Roundtable from all sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides
in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us, Karen Kastler, Bureau Chief for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Susan Tebin, reporter for the The Ohio Capital Journal, and Shane Stegmiller, reporter, for Hanna News Service. Karen, Governor DeWine announced a big higher education grant last week. It's $50 million. Can you tell me more about the money, who's supposed to benefit, where it came from?
Kasler: Mine said that this is a, it's a grant, a federal grant, $50 million over five years, and it will help 220,000 low-income and first-generation students go to college. It will allow that for people to be kind of placed, navigators to be placed into middle schools and high schools to help kids who are low- income, whose families have not gone to college before really access that. And he said at this moment, this is fairly new, so it's not really certain exactly how that money will be. Used and where it will be divided up and everything. But he said that it was a big deal. Ohio had the largest grant of all these from the federal government for this purpose, the Federal Talent Search Grant. So he obviously is very happy about it.
Juravich: Yeah. So it's federal money. Do you know, did Ohio like apply for it? Was it an award? Apparently yes. I feel like we won a contest or something. Kind of. Okay. So DeWine has said he'd like to see more collaboration between colleges and universities, smoother pathways from two-year community colleges to four-year institutions. But he does differ from Republican candidate for Governor Vivek Ramaswami, who called for some college consolidation early in his campaign. Um, Karen, do you know about how their visions for higher education differ? Well, that's a question that I.
Kasler: I would have liked to have asked Grandma Swamy, you only have 24 minutes, so I had to cut things out. He's talked about consolidating some universities. And that's gotten a lot of pushback. So I'm not sure if he's refined that idea or whatever. But DeWine said that's not going to happen. He doesn't think even any state lawmakers would propose that, because there's no support there to eliminate any of Ohio's 14 public universities. He said that sharing services is a possibility. But he said they have to consider what this does for students. If students benefit when two universities share services in some way. So he definitely is on the side of let's keep the network, the system as it is, let's not do a statewide network of colleges and universities or anything like that.
Juravich: Yeah, and has Amy Acton said anything concrete about higher education plans besides I've heard her say many times that she loves her like higher education so.
Kasler: I haven't heard her talk about this specifically, and again, 24 minutes I didn't get a chance to ask.
Juravich: You're listening to all sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. We're talking with Karen Kastler from the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Shane Stegmiller from Hanna News Service, and Susan Tebin with the Ohio Capital Journal. Shane, you wrote about non-citizen voters being removed from the voter rolls. Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced last week that his office removed 75 voter registrations from the voting rolls involving non-citizens. So, do you know how these 75 people were found?
Stegmiller: It's The Secretary of State does an annual process where they kind of go through the, you know, clean up the voter registration rules. Under Larose, since they'passed the constitutional amendment that only Ohio citizens can vote in elections, and that has kind of made it a regular process now to kind of do this regular check of registrations. And what they're doing is they're taking the voter registrations and they're comparing at state and federal data, they're looking at. BMV records, they're looking at the social security records, they're using the systematic alien verification for entitlements, which everyone knows as the SAVE system. Okay. They're using that. You've heard SAVE. The SAVE Act, yeah. That's what that stands for. So they're usin' that to kinda help identify people who are non-citizens.
Juravich: So the SAVE Act hasn't passed, though, so that they're doing a part of what is in it, if it would pass.
Stegmiller: Well, they're using save is actually already a system that a federal system that you can access. The save act itself would require more use of this system for all state by all states to try and remove citizens. One of the criticisms that's been made about that legislation and the system is there can be errors. I mean, if there's two people named Joe Smith, how do you know which Smith you're removing. LaRose seemed to try and get ahead of that criticism in his latest announcement saying that they've put some safeguards in place to try to prevent that, that if they flag one they're individually investigating it and making sure that it is somebody who is not supposed to be there. And they also noticed that, you know, people can, there's ways that if people are. Flagged improperly. They can either raise it with the Secretary of State's office, the Board of Elections, or somewhere along the line.
Juravich: Is 75 people a lot?
Stegmiller: There's like about eight million people currently. I don't have the exact number today, but it's around eight million registered Ohio voters. So that's pretty small number. What seems to happen a lot of these cases is, people go to the BMV to get their driver's license and the BMB is supposed to offer you a chance to register and sometimes people get registered through that or other ways. There's also the chance that somebody just registers. You know, knowing that they shouldn't. Yeah.
Juravich: I mean, this continues, though, for a non-citizen voting. It continues to be a rare occurrence in Ohio. Ohio has, and Secretary of State Frank LaRose has for years touted his rigorous process. So this is very rare. And he does these checks to avoid it.
Stegmiller: And when he's, when they've, and they've been made this a big issue, especially since president Donald Trump has made this, a big issues, they've made this a bigger issue, we're going to catch non-citizens. We're going remove them from the roles. And when they announce arrests and indictments, there's only a handful here and there, and even then, if you follow the cases to the conclusion, not all of them are involving a conviction. And then there was one Ohio case where. Know, the judge threw that out because it was a case where the woman went to the BNV and she was told to register vote by the BNB person. Mm-hmm. Okay.
Juravich: And this leads me to, I don't know if any of the three of you have any updates on the Secretary of State's race in November. We haven't talked about it much on the roundtable. We will in the coming weeks before the election, but Democrat Alison Russo versus Republican Robert Sprague. Spragues is the current Ohio treasurer. There's also a libertarian candidate in the race, Thomas Press. And then I should add that Frank LaRose is running to become auditor. Have any of you had any time to write about the Secretary of State's race recently?
Stegmiller: I've been following it.
Juravich: That's what's the primary for me.
Kasler: I will be talking to both the candidates. We have a series of conversations with the candidates on the down ticket ballots or the down ticket races, rather, coming up in October. So I'll be talking for the TV.
Juravich: For the TV show or for the radio.
Kasler: Both for both. OK, multimedia. Yes.
Stegmiller: We've been talking about gubernatorial debates, but I've just been seeing the various campaigns of the down ticket races putting out statements about debates and that, and we'll see if any of those happen. In the attorney general's race, John Kulowitz said he would agree to a debate hosted by Youngstown State if his opponent, auditor Keith Faber, would agree a debate that's This is by Kenyon College. Alison Russo put out a statement saying she doesn't want to debate unless Robert Sprague admits that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. So there's all sorts of political posturing with the debates going on down ticket as well.
Juravich: Interesting. All right. We have a few minutes left. And Susan, I wanted you to update us on a story from last week related to the Haitian community in Springfield. I know you wrote about this. I also know, I heard a story this morning, that religious groups are appealing to Governor DeWine to step in and help Haitians be able to stay in the country. Do you have anything new to report when it comes to the Haitiian community in springfield?
Tebben: No, my colleague Megan Henry has been working a lot on that, but yeah, I did do a story last week talking just about what officials have said. Obviously, Governor DeWine has been very forthright about, he feels like that. Pierre de Maas Bell is the young man from, he was a student at Wright State who appeared to have died by suicide walking into traffic on I-70, and DeWine called that a tragedy and said that He has been very open about how he does not feel like the TPS exploration and the process of deporting these people in Springfield is the right thing to do, and it's not going to be good for the economy, it's going to be not good for people. And the fact that Haiti is still, the U.S. Department of State still considers it a dangerous place to go, a place that you should not go because of violence and several other things. So. So, you know, I feel like the religious groups appealing to DeWine understand that he feels that way. I'm not sure how much that there is for him to do because this is a federal decision and the Trump administration has been very clear that they feel this is the right thing to do and their departments, federal agencies, are saying, encouraging people to self-deport as the solution to having to wear ankle monitors, having to go through the process, so. It's hard to see where there would be a connection there, but it's worth trying, I guess.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, Karen, can the governor really do anything whenever it me federal issue? There's so many people calling for the governor to step in and do something, but like, can he?
Kasler: Well, the clergy members, they met on Friday and took a letter over to Dewine's office, a letter that was addressed to Ohio's two U.S. Senators and the two Congress members who represent the Springfield area and the Columbus area, where there's a lot of Haitians also living. And the letter asks those federal officials to get involved, to try to stop ICE from doing its actions, to make some changes. But we haven't heard anything from them and we have. Heard some reaction to the apparent suicide of Pierre d'Amaspelle, but really in terms of trying to bring back TPS or something, that just seems really unlikely for, and I don't think those four members of Congress in general could be able to do something like that.
Tebben: And I will say there's Congressman Greg Landsman has said that he has reached out directly to the Department of Homeland Security to try to get them to consider something. He says he agrees that there should be security and border security and things like that, but that this was not the way to do this. But Greg's Landsman being in the minority in Congress, I'm not sure how much weight that will carry.
Juravich: Well, and it's also interesting that Governor DeWine says that he will follow federal laws. He says that for all the time, right, Karen, that he'll follow what the federal government asks him to do, but at the same time, he's saying that he doesn't agree with it. Oh, yeah. He said that.
Kasler: So yeah, he said that this is a policy and he's been outspoken against it since the whole question of TPS and the ending of it for Haitians. He said it's a dangerous country. It's more dangerous now than ever before. And he thinks it's terrible thing that it ended. So he's pretty clear on that.
Juravich: Shane, we have one minute left. I was going to ask you, the Ohio Controlling Board is meeting today and Hanna News Service reported that the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health is requesting $5 million dollars in increase to help support statewide initiatives to address problem gambling. I mean, can you talk about the scope of that in 30 to 40 seconds? Yeah.
Stegmiller: I'll do my best so They have two different initiatives that they're looking to fund with it They're gonna use like a million dollars for a contract that they are gonna do a gambling prevalence survey And it's something that they do every five years to just kind of just to see how bad gambling is going and Problem gambling is in the state. The other one is going to go to a marketing firm They're going to try and develop and implement a centralized problem gambling home that will streamline like all the existing resources so they don't have like duplication in that and make information for Ohio easier to navigate. So it's always a good thing when you can.
Juravich: Is it unusual for them to ask for more money or is it just sometimes state agencies ask for money?
Stegmiller: Sometimes state agencies ask for more money, and they don't always get through it all done through the budget process. And sometimes they get a federal grant that they weren't expecting, and they need.
Juravich: They need matching money.
Stegmiller: Yeah, or they need to just, you know, sign off on the lawmakers so that they can actually spend the money that they're getting from the federal government.
Juravich: Alright, well thank you to Shane Stegmiller, reporter for ANA News Service. Thank you. Thank you! It's Susan Tebben with the Ohio Capital Journal. Thank you, thank you. And Karen Kasler, Bureau Chief at the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Thanks Karen. You're welcome, thankyou. This has been the Reporter Roundtable from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich, thanks for joining us.